


Fixed and Riskless Surveillance

by IvyBel



Series: Earth-425 [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen, actually more of a reflection on barbara's part than anything else, but oracle is here so everything is great, i can't wait to see it go downhill, i haven't written in so long that i've forgotten how to do it, not the characters you know but hopefully still lovable, small introduction to this version of earth, technically bruce and selina are only thought about but i'm including that darnit, weirdly my cleanest story ever wow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 11:23:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13902996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyBel/pseuds/IvyBel
Summary: Gotham was a city of crime, everyone knew that. Strangely, though, the supposed-to-be heroes were often crazier than the villains. Ill-prepared, singing all the time, and god knew who they actually were under those hoods and sunglasses. They were still the city's heroes, though.At least, that's what Barbara Gordon liked to think.Welcome to Earth-425.





	Fixed and Riskless Surveillance

Barbara Gordon had always been a proud woman.

 

She wasn't vain about it, and she certainly wasn't mean to anyone else because of it, but she knew that she was good at her job. Working hard and getting things done were definitely two of her best traits, or at what she thought were her best traits.

 

Tonight was no different, and she was determined to work just as hard as any other night, despite the fact that there wasn’t much to do, relatively speaking.

 

Or, at least, there wasn't supposed to be. Spying a couple of guards talking to each other on the cameras, she took up her walkie-talkie. Despite the fact that there wasn’t much to do, she still had to do her job. 

 

"Harris, Jones. I love socializing as much as the next, but you guys have been standing there for a couple of minutes, and if you two could do some rounds in those minutes that would be even better."

 

She saw the officers jump and look embarrassed, before going back on duty. Good, the last thing they needed was a break-out, Barbara was pretty sure the asylum’s funding would go into the negatives.

 

Content as she would be with everything else on the monitors, Chief of Security Barbara Gordon allowed herself to lean back a bit. Technically she didn't have to take camera duty, but it gave her something useful to do. The last thing she wanted to do is be in her office all night with paperwork. Although, with the only light coming from the monitors in front of her, she would have maybe at least preferred her office’s lamp.

 

She glanced over at the clock on the wall, the stupid ticking clock that she was this close to replacing with her own money. Just past midnight. She still had a long night ahead of her, but this was admittedly her favorite time to do nothing.

 

The first part of the night was always the most stressful part. Most of the asylum patients were just settling down, and sometimes medicine was still being given to those who needed help sleeping. Doctors everywhere and guards everywhere and patients everywhere, everywhere was a mess. Past that, everything was usually quiet, save for a few noises from the denizens, which was her guards’ responsibilities anyway. And they knew to behave with her watching.

 

She crosschecked the guard schedule against the various cameras, making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. She couldn’t help herself; she stopped briefly on the camera that showed an angle of a certain room. A patient’s.

 

As far as she remembered, he'd always been here. Staff members older than her had shared the same sentiment, he’d always been wandering around somewhere in the yard, or pacing in his room. The violent patients left him alone for what she’d been told was a very good reason, though she didn’t know exactly what it was. Therapists addressed frustration with him for his seemingly lack of improvement, despite years and years of time passed. Barbara had glanced in his file once, she was never good at leaving things be, and revisited an old tragedy.

 

Everyone knew the story of the Waynes.

 

Thomas, Martha, and Bruce Wayne go down an alleyway one night, and only two of them come out. Old Gotham news that everyone knew, but still managed to surprise citizens with what happened next. Who would have guessed the ending to such an event might almost be more tragic than the event itself?

 

But even that was old news now, and as much as Barbara still believed there was deceit involved from the Widow, there was nothing she could do now, that man was broken beyond repair, probably mostly from his time here than anything else.

 

That was the saddest part.

 

Just thinking about it made her uncomfortable, and she attempted to occupy herself with sorting the various papers on her desk into piles. Piles that mostly only served to give the illusion of order, but piles.

 

Barbara knew Bruce Wayne. At least, as much as much as one could claim to know Bruce Wayne. She had talked to him a lot, back when she was a regular guard. Maybe “talked to” wasn’t exactly the right phrase, it was mostly him talking at her and trying to distract her from her duties, and at some point it started sometimes working. He just had that way about him, he sucked you in.

 

In a way, he was almost charming.

 

He would have been, that is. He was always a quieter sort of man, but he had a creepy sort of aura around him. At first, she couldn’t figure it out, but after speaking to him a few times, she'd slowly realized; he never stopped smiling. He was always smiling, laughing, even when there was seemingly nothing to smile or laugh about. It wasn't necessarily malicious, just...weird.

 

He constantly made scenes of childish things, but other times, he moved so quietly that he could be behind you without you even knowing. He could stand as still as a statue, or be flailing and doing something dramatic. He rambled and rambled, changing topics over and over until it was a conversation with only Bruce himself, and only he knew what he was talking about.

 

Sometimes, Barbara wondered if he even knew there were real people around him at all.

 

Well, the good news was all the papers were in a pile. The bad news was, she had no idea what papers were in which pile, she’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts. With a huff, she took to disassembling them. The last thing she needed was to lose an important paper because of irony.

 

As for who killed Thomas Wayne, no one was sure and no one could agree one way or the other. Someone said it was Bruce, others say it was some random mugger looking for money. Everyone had an opinion, though over time the weight of the event had died down to a footnote of a bad year and no one argued much about it unless they were conspiracy theorists looking for their big break.

 

Barbara herself doubted that the man who was called "the angel of Arkham" could do such a thing, but on the other hand, she had no idea what was going on in that head of his, and he didn’t seem particularly set on giving her an answer. She reluctantly accepted that it wasn’t her business, and that it wasn’t even her job to know. She wasn’t a doctor, she was in charge of making sure no one got in or out.

 

Why she willingly did both every night was against everything she seemed to stand for, but she'd long been convinced that it was the right thing to do, and maybe it was.

 

Barbara did it because Bruce had told her a secret once. "A super secret secret you can't tell anyone, no matter what," he'd told her, word for word. At the time, she'd played along, she figured it was something crazy she'd have to tell his doctor about later, maybe do some paperwork, the usual stuff. She had gotten used to the inmates and their “secrets,” they were usually stuck in their own heads and, while maybe medically concerning, there was nothing that she figured was very important to her specifically.

 

Instead of that, he told her about Batman, and in turn gave her something that would turn her life in a completely different direction.

 

Batman. A "vigilante" who'd been named as such because of the ridiculous amount of bat-themed branded clothing. Bat pajamas under a bat hoodie under a cheap black coat, and bat crocs to boot. No one had taken him seriously when he’d popped up, the media naming him such as joke to add insult to injury. Who could possibly take a man named “Batman” seriously? No one, that's who.

 

At least, no one had taken him seriously until he'd busted a late night robbery at a bank by incapacitating everyone with a wooden baseball bat, and suddenly there was panic. The media had a field day, and the weird man in the bat pajamas that everyone was laughing at was now seen as some sort of crazy escaped serial killer. Arkham itself had gone over its patients to make sure it wasn't missing any and was on high alert for a few days. No one said it out loud, but everyone knew that if this guy was a violent serial killer, he’d come from Arkham. GCPD assured everyone that the situation was being handled, but Barbara’s father had confided in her that the police had no leads on this guy.

 

Not a single one.

 

The man was just there, and if the papers had their way, he would’ve been known as the biggest threat to Gotham since whatever the last biggest threat the papers had claimed was threatening Gotham.

 

Barbara personally never bought it. Not only were the Gotham papers complete bull anyway, but she'd never heard of anyone being killed by the Batman. Knocked out, sure. Scared, definitely, but no one had been killed. At least, not yet. She figured most people were scared because no one knew where he came from or who he was, and sure enough, the papers eventually stopped hyping up the public and normal life gradually resumed. Sure, people would like him caught, but until then he might as well clean out some of the alleyways first.

 

Barbara ran a hand through her hair, swallowing hard as she thought about that day. It haunted her, and looking back she wasn’t even sure whether it was a good feeling or a bad feeling anymore.

 

Bruce Wayne was the Batman.

 

At least that's what he told her. She hadn't believed him at first, figuring he’d heard someone talking about it and used it as a delusion, until he proved it that night by predicting something special the vigilante would do that night.

 

“He’ll leave a bat symbol on the door of the bank. It’s usually not my style, but I’ll do it just for you.”

 

He told her that he and Kyle had been sneaking out for a while, and then sneaking back in before the next morning. He refused to tell her exactly how, in case she "couldn't be trusted," but soon they had her convinced and caught in their web of vigilantism and hijinks.

 

It started with her helping them get in and out a bit easier.

 

At first, it was just a reflex. She began to hear them creeping in the evening, and would distract another guard so they wouldn't get caught, feeling the pride that came from willingly letting people escape to fight crime in pajamas.

 

Before she knew it, she'd sometimes sneak out too. Bruce gave her the affectionate title 'Batgirl' as a result of one night, and it stuck. There goes Batgirl, running around and solving mysteries and foiling crimes and laughing and making Gotham think there were four crazy escaped serial killers now. The papers had a great time, and for once in that brief period in her life, she didn’t care.

 

Barbara tapped the side of her wheelchair, lost in swirling thought. Not even the ticking of the clock could distract her right now, she was on her own.

 

After the accident, she'd slowly crawled her way up and out of the shambles of her fallen life. She wanted, no, needed to be helpful, one way or another. If that meant becoming the damn Chief of Security of Arkham Asylum, then by god so be it.

 

And here she was now. Sitting at a desk. In the dark. Watching two guards chat to each other while they’re supposed to be working.

 

"Harris, Jones. Come on, guys, really? If someone escapes, I’m holding you two accountable."

 

Bruce and Selina were already out for the night, she didn't have to worry about them for another few hours, but the last thing she needed is someone else getting out. They didn’t want another John Doe incident, they almost shut the entire asylum down for that one. Not exactly her idea of fun.

 

Tick, tock, tick, tock. She briefly wondered if these clocks were in the patients’ rooms too, they were enough to drive someone slightly batty.

 

Yes, Barbara Gordon technically failed her job. Every single night she let two patients escape, and every night she let two vigilantes back in. That kind of life was infectious, and once you were there you could never leave without leaving a part of your soul out there with it. And maybe a part of your sanity, if you happened to be travelling with the Bats.

 

She could never have it any other way ever again, and she strangely felt okay with that. Rebuilding her life again never felt so within reach. She even had a new nickname, something Bruce had called her when he first saw the wheelchair. It’d gradually stuck on her, and she’d kept it despite the inevitable mild heartache it brought.

 

Oracle had always been a proud woman, and the Batman knew it too.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been so looooong, I have missed my words!
> 
> I have to admit, my guilty pleasure is creating Batman characters and Batman worlds, and of all of them this one is one of my favorites! I'm going to write a series of short things, the first of which will explain where our characters are at, and the later ones detailing more shenanigans. Just enjoy being mildly confused for the time being, next is John Doe.
> 
> And he's an absolute delight.


End file.
